BAGHDAD: Iraq has sentenced 14 people to death by hanging for their role in the Islamic State group massacre of hundreds of army cadets in 2014, judicial officials said Thursday.
The massacre, one of the worst committed by IS in Iraq, saw the extremists in June 2014 abduct up to 1,700 mainly Shiite cadets from the Speicher military base in the Tikrit region and execute them.
The Al-Rusafa Criminal Court in the capital Baghdad “issued death sentences against 14 criminal terrorists for their participation in the Camp Speicher massacre in 2014”, the judicial authority said in a statement, without specifying their nationalities.
The 14 men have 30 days to appeal the sentence. Decrees authorising executions must also be signed by the president. In 2016, 36 men were hanged for their participation in the massacre.
The Speicher massacre took place in the early days of the group’s offensive in Iraq, when its forces seized the second city Mosul and turned it into its stronghold — until it was driven out by the Iraqi army and an international coalition in 2017. –Agencies
